No Rest From The Kill
by Assassin For Hire
Summary: Elektra severely disciplines an arrogant young boxer who tries to challenge her in the ring. Please review! :)


===============================  
  
NO REST FROM THE KILL  
  
by Krista C.  
  
===============================  
  
Outside the festering grit and hardship that was Hell's Kitchen, the inner city remained amass with roughians even in broad daylight. On a small corner on Sixth Avenue, there was a game of dice being played by the neighborhood druggies beside the local gym. Swaying past them and into the facility was a lithely-built woman in her mid-twenties. Her pretty profile was framed by soft waves of black hair that fell from her ponytail as she walked. Gradient rose glasses adorned her timeless gray eyes. She wore black training pants and her favorite scarlet tanktop, while a red athletic bag swung freely under one hand.  
  
Red happened to be her favorite color. She was decorated with the color so often, she had learned long ago to stop caring where the fabric ended and where the spilt blood of her victims began. It all seemed the same to her: one lively, complex, passionate color. Red. It symbolized daring. And daring was all this mysterious woman lived for. Her name was Elektra, an assassin of deadly capacity. A woman of unmistakable beauty. Her paced, self-assured walk betrayed none of her actual tenacity because she played her game quietly. Intelligently. As understated as a sleeping cobra.  
  
Inside the gym was the smell of men and sweat. This was where all of the local boxers in the lower city gathered to throw punches every afternoon. There were scant few women in sight, save for the owner's daughter who worked the register. Elektra held up the monthly pass hanging around her neck and pushed open the grated steel door. Ignoring the stares trailing her figure, she entered into a labyrinth of chaos. All around her punching bags were being beaten to a pulp, and the grunting of each laboring boxer resounded throughout the small complex in a crescendo of physical effort. Seasoned boxers had long became accustomed to her presence. They moved aside and made room for her. She became known as the nameless woman who quietly took to her corner bag and began assaulting it as if it was an abusive ex. They were wary of her. Wary of her skill.  
  
Sometimes, however, the younger ones were helpless to staring and became slaves to their own curiosity. There were many things about Elektra worth staring at, but of them was her incomparable fury at the punching bag that held their attention. She always visited the gym having venom to spare. Elektra came here every chance she could. It was her favorite little respite away from the work she undertook as a salaried assassin. By nature, she was a highly energetic woman, full of hostility that was born of a violent, tragic past.  
  
Elektra. The ronin. The lover. The vanisher.   
  
Elektra set her things down on the floor and descended upon an empty bench to begin taping her knuckles flat. As most athletes would agree, there was often more satisfaction in the training than in the actual competition. She practiced with sandbags that hung from her ceiling at home, but the quiet of her own apartment proved paltry compared to the gratuitous attention her fellow boxers lavished upon her when she took to these public bags. They were almost always to the point of gawking. With her back to her audience, Elektra took her time stretching the muscles in her neck from side to side. Although her shoulders were currently relaxed they remained trim for combat, perfectly sculpted in the feminine camber. She worked every inch of her body while maintaining a somewhat diminutive figure. Beneath that soft skin, however, was pure muscle. With the lifestyle that she lead, the ronin couldn't afford anything less than superhuman physicality. It was often to her amusement when she overheard ridiculous things from the male competition. Myths about women's fitness training. No woman became She-Hulk simply by hitting a bag.  
  
Lightly bouncing on her heels, Elektra swept a few errant locks behind her ears and wasted no time tossing out a few bare-fisted jabs at the inanimate target. She kept her stance on the move. The bag swung gently in response. She began delivering contact at a faster pace. The bag was dealt a backhanded blow. She spun on her heels. Elektra's breathing remained silent, the way she emphasized keeping a steady heartrate when in the actual act of killing. Her attention was squarely set on the black leather target that kept returning to her with every hit. At the apex of a broad swing, Elektra met the pendulum with a straight shin and slammed her fist into the heart of the bag, knocking it away for a double hit.  
  
Soon, the offended target was alive with noise. Every delivered punch unsettled the chalk dust on the old leather and made the air pockets whistle with a satisfactory, "Whoom! Whoom! Whoom!" Over the noise, a rather impressed voice rose across the pandemonium.  
  
"You look ready to kill that thing, sweetheart. Need something with a face to spot you?"  
  
Elektra ignored the man trying to break her attention, but he persevered.  
  
"I'd like some time alone with you in the ring."  
  
At this, Elektra gave the bag a whopping right cross and caught it to a stop. She let her heartbeat relax before slowly turning around to eye her competition. The ronin in her bowed in the ancient way and accepted the challenge. Her competition merely smirked and headed for his bench to prepare.  
  
A few minutes grazed by, yet Elektra remained a quiet presence even as she entered the ring, swinging effortlessly over the top rope with her long legs. Her challenger was a fair-faced Puerto Rican, tall and athletically built. He wore black shorts but remained bare aside from his matching helmet and gloves. Dolled up as he was, Elektra, was in fact eyed with some hesitation. She wore no headgear. No protection. Simply a pair of red boxing gloves she'd rented for the fight.  
  
"Aren't you putting a helmet on?" he frowned down at her.  
  
"I'll be quick," Elektra quietly replied, idly undoing her hair only to wrap it again in a tighter knot.  
  
"I like your outfit," Puerto Rican snidely commented, though both of them were obviously delighted by his lighthearted humor. It was just that Elektra wasn't a big fan of laughing. Or smiling, for that matter. They traded lusty looks, Elektra's gray gaze more of an ambiguous leak of self-confidence, but lusty just the same. Her challenger, after all, was rather well-endowed with good looks. Slamming his gloves together, the nameless stranger commenced the fight and together, Elektra and prey went toe-to-toe, circling each other to study their point of entry.  
  
The stranger stuck out his glove in a feeble attempt to stroke Elektra's cheek, but she unflinchingly batted it away. Her first jab missed, as did her second. Blame it on his smile. Puerto Rican boy replied with a fake right hook, only to lightly slap her on the cheek with the back of that same hand. Mmn, he was going to end up for the hospital for that. The little devil on her shoulder told her so. Just the slightest hint of red colouring Elektra's cheeks revealed to her opponent that she was irritated at the tease, and when the opportunity next presented itself, she repaid him the favor.  
  
Neatly dodging what would otherwise be a straight left, Elektra snuck in and slapped him soundly across the right cheek, in the same mocking manner dished out to her by her opponent. Only harder. Despite having just been pimpslapped by a woman, he graciously chuckled and slammed his gloves together again, prepping for a better attack.  
  
"You're killin' me here, baby, and I ain't talkin' your moves. What's your name?"  
  
Elektra deftly avoided another straight left and struck the man's padded forehead with a palmstrike. Irritated, he quickly tried to regain his balance.  
  
"Can't speak. Kicking your ass," she replied in a fit of mischief. Very unlike her, but hey. This was starting to feel like a playground fight. Like child's play.  
  
"Suit yourself," Rican shrugged, wiping his nose with the back of his glove. "I'm not trying to hit on you."  
  
No, he was just trying to take her head off with a severe uppercut that Elektra barely avoided. Having not only been rejected but scolded, it seemed Elektra's opponent was inspired to dish out more furious blows. He attacked her faster, dodged better. He had been boxing longer than she, apparently, with fancy footwork that was almost something to applaud. She let him grace her left shoulder with a lucky punch, sending her back towards the rope. All in the hopes of exposing his favorite attack arm and his weak spots. Her gray eyes remained unperturbed, only serving to mock his machismo.   
  
Soon, the two of them had gathered quite the audience. The entire gym dropped everything they were doing to watch the classic display of testosterone versus estrogen. Much to the men's shame, the lean, dark female was very much owning her challenger. She even took an uppercut to her abs, only to fake her pain and dodge the oncoming Puerto Rican with a sidestep, sending a resounding vertical punch to his six-abs in rebuttal. Her gloves snared pure muscle. The young man expounded a fair amount of air and doubled over in ringing pain. They were both on the floor after that, only Elektra was the first to overcome her dizzy spell and straighten herself on two feet. His hits felt so real Elektra almost craved for more. She could have survived a few more rounds of this. It had been so long time since anyone really managed to work her up. She wasn't used to relying on mere punches to win a fight.  
  
Elektra's wheezing smile was her way of tasting victory. On a private level, the assassin was finding that it took all her willpower not to send a bone-crushing heel kick onto the young man's sternum. That would surely end the fight and seal his fate in a heartbeat. But, no. No, she couldn't. She had already proven to everyone that the win clearly belonged to her. Most importantly, she had proven to herself that she still had it in her to spare an innocent life. There would be no blood shed on this ring today. She never killed under public scrutiny, anyway. Never. Assassination, in her mind's eye, was not the same as murder. She was content, knowing the poor sap on the floor struggling for gasps of breath would surely find himself with a few welting bruises in the morning. Elektra crouched beside the man's figure and eyed him placidly. She refused to touch him.  
  
"I'm Christine," she smoothly confided. "Was that quick enough for you?"  
  
A reference back to her earlier promise that the fight would only last a few seconds. Like a deer caught in headlights, Rican merely blinked back at her, his bewitching angel from above come to distract him from a coma.  
  
"You are SO HOT..." he whimpered insistently, inspiring Elektra to stand once more and abandon him where he lay.  
  
Spare me, she thought in exasperation. Everyone's gaze trailed after the Greek woman as she parted from the crowd and leisurely went about gathering her things. Despite Rico Suave's rambling attempts at securing her phone number in front of everyone, Elektra was not the least bit interested in answering to an injured admirer lying flat on his back on the tarpaulin. She had gotten her afternoon's worth of training and that was that. To hell with any more interruptions. She'd soak in the hot tub as soon as she got home. The hushed silence stretched on forever, it seemed, until at long last the grated door slammed shut behind the woman's swaying figure. Outro, Elektra: Assassin.  
  
Disclaimer: Her Royal Redness is property of Marvel. I only play her character in RP every so often. Reviews are appreciated. :) 


End file.
